Elmore v. Ozmint

Reversed and remanded by published opinion. Judge KING wrote the majority opinion, in which Judge GREGORY joined. Judge WILKINSON wrote a dissenting opinion.

OPINION

KING, Circuit Judge:

For nearly thirty years, Edward Lee Elmore, a mentally retarded handyman, *786has been behind bars, mainly on South Carolina’s death row, for the January 1982 murder of Dorothy Edwards, an elderly woman who had sporadically employed him. The 28 U.S.C. § 2254 petition now on appeal, however, is part of Elmore’s very first effort to secure federal habeas corpus relief. The antecedent state proceedings — encompassing…